More machinima

Via Slashdot and from the Red vs Blue guys (season 3 starting soon) we have The Strangerhood (with a little help from Sims 2).

for more see: Art of Machinima and Machinima : Spielbergs with Joystick or this Machinima: Games Act Like Films

Pepsi.ca to give away 2,016 iPods

Via vowe dot net:Pepsi.ca and Apple Canada are going to give away one 20GB iPod every hour starting October 3rd for 84 days straight. Only Canadian residents can enter, and all the regular conditions apply. One interesting twist is that all entries are thrown out after each hourly draw. So if your up at 3am on the 26th day, it might be a good time to enter.

There is a "no purchase required" way to get your hourly pin's. no robots need apply.

Only in Canada, you say? Pity...

The Battle for Toro

Following up on my orginal The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi, there is a flurry of press reports on the threat to Ontario sushi in the CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and CTV .

Most of this is CYA: "prevent future illness and bring the province up to national standards."; "most people won't be able to taste the difference between fish that's previously been frozen." In other words : we are doing this for your own good; you don't know any better; now go away or I shall call you names.

The Star article claims, " the provincial government is backing away from a strict new ban on the use of fresh raw fish in sushi."

It's early days yet, and pressure needs to be continuously applied if anything is going to get done. Again here's the contact info for your MPP

Update : from my Referral logs I see Sloot aka The Original Goldfish has picked (and copied) up my orginal post " The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi" and Technorati tells me: 3 things daily (alice in wonderland reference?) picked up the same glob amd mail story; Max's Mewsings points out the CYA; and Small Dead Animals is rather cranky considering she claims not to like Sushi.

Update 2:There is Now to the Petition to the Hon George Smitherman (" sushi aficionado as well as Ontario's Health Minister").

Update 3 amd more Sushi Wars

Found words: What do you call someone who can't be bothered to Vote?

Via The New York Times "Is Voting Worth the Trouble?" (September 26, 2004):

The ancient Greeks had a word for a person who is indifferent to public affairs in this way: idiotes, or idiot.

category:
words

If all stories were written like science fiction stories

Via ST(O). I'm not should if the intention is to mock the sci fi story, or to highlight the difficulty of writing (and reading) when you cannot assume the reader is familiar with the subject, word, concept, history, etc. Contemporary fiction authors have it so easy.

This quote from a Charles Stross interview is a classic example:

CS: I wrote "Lobsters" and showed it to a friend. He said "that's really cool, but you'll never sell it--the audience would have to overdose on Slashdot for six months before they got it." He was completely right--he just underestimated the number of people out there who overdose on Slashdot!

No would I love the Lobster stories; As a SlashDorker since ~ 96 I'm so the demographic for this stuff.

Use the search bar and Stross to see more

Worst jobs in history, via Baldric

Via Boing Boing we have The Worst jobs in history, via Baldric. So, yes your job cold be worse:

Fuller, Groom Of The Stool, Guillemot Egg Collector, Barber Surgeon, Bath Attendant, Coin Producer, Tanning (basically most of these involve "Pee")

Of course none of this compares to the hell on earth that is back office bank securities operations.

Saturday Night Hong Kong Films in Toronto (Omini TV ) update

I've added review links and comments to my previous Saturday Night Hong Kong Films in Toronto (Omini TV ) listings

Not Your Father's PBX?

From Association for Computing Machinery comes Integrating VoIP into the enterprise could mean the end of telecom business as usual. from their VoIP issue.

(what's a PBX? Private Branch Exchange. A telephone exchange used within an organization and located on the premises; an example would be the main switchboard in a hospital. see here for more)

Use the Search bar (right) for more on PBX, Asterisk, or VoIP
as well as

Kar Wai Wong's 2046

Opening on Sept 28th (that's Tuesday) across Asia, 2046 is Wing Kar Wai 4 year cinematic journey, starting Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, and Zhang Ziyi.
.

The New York Times magazine tells the story (The Director's Director (Registration required) behind the making of this film which will likey be a huge success (or an absolute disaster). A (indirect) sequel for his 2000 "In the Mood for Love" (Fa yeung nin wa), in certainly appears to be a lush and colorful.

(The Globe and Mail had a good and very different article, but I can't find a link to it; they don't want to share?)

I haven't found a trailer (yet) but here is a short teaser, no sound; also a Link to ziped hi-res images from the film; and this is the 2046 official site(Flash), in english/chinese/japanese.

No word on when us Northern Americans can view the beauty

How the music biz can live forever, get even richer, and be loved

Andrew Orlowski (San Francisco bureau chief of The Register) spoke to the cream of the music industry, telling them to embrace the Future, Technology,Freedom and Growth, and dump DRM, and old business Models.

He also suggested why and how. He does a good job of suggesting where things are headed, and how not to resist, oppurtunities, possible objections - and anwsers to them.

To sum up, then: because of digital technology, you think your rights are worthless. They aren't. You need to monetize them in two ways: by ensuring that there's a revenue stream for things you can't count, and finding new bottles that you can count.

One of the better "talks" on this subject, right up their with Cory's
The Straight Goods on DRM

Nic Wolff's single-signon bookmarklet

Via Jon Udell comes Nic Wolff's single-signon bookmarklet. From one key phrase come many

Nine things you can do to make your web site better.

Good advice Via Scribbling.net

1.Conceive your site as a web site.
2.Validate your markup.
3.Avoid frames and splash pages.
4.Optimize for download.
5.Make your site URLs as short and static.
6.Textual, and non-Javascript dependent.
7.Search engine spider friendly.
8. Error messages your mother could understand.
9. Don't "Click here".

Contemporary design & architecture in Tokyo.

Via Anti Pixel we have MoCo Tokyo - Modern contemporary design & architecture

remember "The future is here, just unevenly distributed" (WG)

Network-attached processing and Really multi multi core chips.

Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends comes word of Azul Systems and it's 384 core chips and boxes designed to only run 'virtual-machine' codes, such as those written in Java or .net.

BusinessWeek Online writes about Azul: A Server Startup with a Plan.

CEO Stephen DeWitt sold Cobalt Networks to Sun Microsystems for ~USD $2 billion, so it can all be smoke and mirror's.

More on Multi core here

Update: retro noticed that Wes Felter links to EE Times : Azul leads wave of proprietary server startups, a more sceptical piece.

And Mercry News / SiliconValley.com (Azul method squeezes chips) has noticed too.

SunRise, SunSet; Before

BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET,staring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, are playing at Festival Cinemas in Toronto

BEFORE SUNRISE ( Director : RICHARD LINKLATER Year :1995)
The Paradise - Sept. 29,
The Royal - Oct. 04

BEFORE SUNSET (Director : RICHARD LINKLATER Year :2004)
The Fox - Oct. 01, Oct. 03, Oct. 03, Oct. 04, Oct. 06,
The Kingsway - Oct. 06, Oct. 24, Oct. 25, Oct. 26, Oct. 26,
The Paradise - Sept. 26, Sept. 26, Sept. 27, Sept. 29, Oct. 15,
The Revue - Oct. 08, Oct. 10,
The Royal - Oct. 01, Oct. 03, Oct. 04,

The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi

The G&M reports on Freezing out sushi, seems someone at Queens Park doesn't like Sushi and sliped into a Food Safty Bill a requirement that any fish to be served raw must have been frozen! Which chances the taste, texture of the fish in question. This came into effect Sept 1 ('04) in Ontario.

Chefs and sushi lovers say the Japanese specialty will cease to be a delicacy after a new health regulation demands that raw fish be frozen before serving...the government ban on fresh fish, which went into effect on September 1 and which extends to sashimi, fish tartare, ceviche and cold-smoked fish.. "There's no way you can freeze sea urchin," he says. "When you defrost it, it just melts away."..may be an overreaction to a problem that hasn't been proved to exist here....Although public-health officials say they consulted the association in the development of new amendments to the Health Protection and Promotion Act, Mr. Mundell says the ban on fresh fish for raw consumption was not included in the final draft presented to his group. "It came as a surprise to us," he says.

Here's the Act, see Section 33 part 9

(9) Fish that is intended to be consumed raw, including raw-marinated and partially cooked fish, shall be frozen before preparation and serving to a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius or below for seven days or to a temperature of minus 35 degrees or below for 15 hours. O. Reg. 74/04, s. 1.

Time to take to the Streets with our Tuna Belly!! Pehaps we can get a letter writing campaign to our MPP's?

Update: Globe and Mail columnist (that's what they call a paid blogger!) MARGARET WENTE has written aboutthe sushi ban in "Toro, toro, toro! Stop the sushi ban!" (Tuesday, September 28, 2004, Page A21) beyond the Insider Edition subscribers only link:

Are you a sushi fan like me? Do you like chowing down on tender tuna morsels with a little wasabi on the side? Raw fish may not be for everyone, but don't knock it if you haven't tried it. It's delicious, nutritious, low-cal, full of omega fatty acids and probably good for your sex life, too.

Another update: The Battle for Toro


Update 2:There is Now to the Petition to the Hon George Smitherman (" sushi aficionado as well as Ontario's Health Minister").

Update 3 :Sushi Wars

Favicon Gallery

MpP Favicon Gallery, links to other Favicon galleries and Favicon Info For Beginners & Techies; Favicon generator; Icon How–To. found on Antipixel

(coming soon a FalsePositives Favicon?)

SOX Compliance plain and simple for Canadain Firms

ITBusiness.ca wirtes about how SOX effects Canadian Firms list on U.S exchanges....

While U.S. companies must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements this year, non-U.S. companies with stocks listed there have until 2005 and the newer Canadian Securities Commission regulations will not require publicly-traded companies to document their internal controls until either 2005 or 2006, said Doug Wilkinson, enterprise risk services partner at Deloitte Consulting in Toronto. Details of the Canadian rules will likely be clarified this fall, he said.....

Asterisk Open Source PBX 1.0 Release

Via SlashDot the release of version 1.0.0 of Asterisk was announced at Astricon (the first Asterisk conference).

(what's a PBX? Private Branch Exchange. A telephone exchange used within an organization and located on the premises; an example would be the main switchboard in a hospital. see here for more)

Also mentioned is the VoIP Wiki.

Use the Search bar (right) for more on PBX, Asterisk, or VoIP

SOX's : Unready for Sarbanes-Oxley?

December '04 marks the next big deadline to comply with strictures of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which often require wholesale changes to a company's financial reporting procedures.

BaseLine Mag has 2 checklist tools to help:
From 'Can't' to Compliant and
Paying for Sarbanes-Oxley, and makes a interesting point:

Companies that use compliance projects to streamline their processes a la the business process re-engineering efforts of the 1980s could well come out ahead by making their financial procedures more efficient...Shaking out the inefficiencies will save time and money...

Search for "Sarbanes" ( Search bar at right) to find more here.

TV over Internet protocol (TVIP)

Via Reuters.com PluggedIn: Next-generation TV streams over phone lines


Here's the 3rd part of the grand slam of the new world of Broadband Telecom : Internet, Voice (VoIP), and TV (TvIP).

I have yet to see if they can get the lossless compression they need (its all in the algorithms), for regular signals let alone HD, but there is alot of money at stake. the article says "-- TVIP requires an Internet connection of at least 2 megabits per second --"

CoMers: The Web Series

Via Bureau 42 is CoMers: The Web Series, a flash based Original Science Fiction Series, 2 episodes posted and 1 nearly done, set in 2351, ~160 after the end of the First Solar War. Not bad.

How to restart your Lotus/Domino server on a schedule

From Phigment Said What? via New4Notes, for your friendly niegborhood Admin (that's you A L!)

The straight goods on DRM, now print-centric and polished

As a followup to The straight goods on DRM, and Via boingboing.net :

ChangeThis has re/published Cory's DRM Manifesto as a print-centric and polished PDF, under it's Create Commons License.

(and a another nice testament to the power of that license, the speech is now in (at least) 6 formats (html/pdf/mp3) and 9 languages)

The Voice over IP Insurrection

Om Malik on Broadband: The Voice over IP Insurrection

"in the battle between Bellheads and Netheads, we're all Netheads now"

plus : from the Association for Computing Machinery: You Don't Know Jack About VoIP and The ABCs of VoIP from Business Week, and the VoIP Wiki.

David Brent's "Office" Rules

Via HC and the BBC TV show THE OFFICE:

1. Eagles may soar high, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
2. Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
3. There may be no 'I' in team, but there's a 'ME' if you look hard enough.
4. Process and Procedure are the last hiding place of people without the wit and wisdom to do their job properly.
5. Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.
6. Never do today that which will become someone else's responsibility tomorrow.
7. Every time you open your mouth you have this wonderful ability to continually confirm what I think.
8. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a LOSER!
9. Put the key of despair into the lock of apathy. Turn the knob of mediocrity slowly and open the gates of despondency - welcome to a day in the average office.
10. It's the team that matters. Where would The Beatles be without Ringo? If John got Yoko to play drums the history of music would be completely different.
11. What does a squirrel do in the summer? It buries nuts. Why? Cos then in winter time he's got something to eat and he won't die. So, collecting nuts in the summer is worthwhile work. Every task you do at work think, would a squirrel do that? Think squirrels. Think nuts.
12. When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
13. Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.
14. If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.
15. If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
16. You don't have to be mad to work here! In fact we ask you to complete a medical questionnaire to ensure that you are not.
17. If you treat the people around you with love and respect, they will never guess that you're trying to get them sacked.
18. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
19. You have to be 100% behind someone, before you can stab them in the back.
20. If work was so good, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
21. Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.
22. There's no 'I' in 'team'. But then there's no 'I' in 'useless smug colleague', either. And there's four in 'platitude-quoting idiot'. Go figure.
23. Know your limitations and be content with them. Too much ambition results in promotion to a job you can't do.
24. Make good use of your cylindrical filing unit, the one you mainly keep under your desk.
25. Quitters never win, winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
26. If you're gonna be late, then be late and not just 2 minutes - make it an hour and enjoy your breakfast.
27. Remember the 3 golden rules: 1. It was like that when I got here. 2. I didn't do it. 3. (To your Boss) I like your style.
28. The office is like an army, and I'm the field general. You're my footsoldiers and customer quality is the WAR!!!
29. Set out to leave the first vapour trail in the blue-sky scenario.
30. Statistics are like a lamp-post to a drunken man - more for leaning on than illumination.
31. A problem shared is a problem halved, so is your problem really yours or just half of someone else's?
32. Is your work done? Are all pigs fed, watered and ready to fly?....
33. You don't have to be mad to work here, but you do have to be on time, well presented, a team player, customer service focused and sober!!
34. I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just some b*stard with a torch, bringing me more work.
35. Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them.

Yoichi Sai's Quill

Just saw the wonderfull Quill at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, the life of a see-eye guide dog, from the pov of the dog. A sweet, sweet film. Now I feel like getting a puppy! Here's the imdb listing. Thanks for the tickets C!

The director, Yoichi Sai, is a fairly famous in Japan. Have to check out some of his other work althought it's quite different. he is more known for his "excursions into society’s underworld".

The film did very well in Hong Kong and Japan. The Film's Offical web site is in Japanese only, but you can see why there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd.

House Of Flying Daggers Press Conference

After the Toronto International Film Fest presentation of "House Of Flying Daggers" was the Press Conference, on Saturday, September 11, 2004, with the director Zhang Yimou and actress Zhang Ziyi.

I've mentioned "House" and "Hero" prevoiusly here and the TIFF here

(as an aside, my wife's niece was acting a a translator to the director)

Stan's Space and Domino Bloging

Welcome to the Lotus/ Domino Blog-osphere Stan Rogers a.k.a. Stan's Space, a frequent commenter on other Domino Blogs - like Mike Golding's NotesTips and Jake Howlett's CodeStore as well as the Lotus forums at Notes.net - Stan has taken the plunge from his seat in the Greater Toronto Area. I'm looking forward to his contributions (and comment on them).

Also the mothership of IBM has a piece on Domino blogging which does a decent summary with a list of resources, but they missed me and my own RSS reader for Notes!

More Core Wars

Nikkei Journal is reporting that Toshiba president Tadashi Okamura confirms that the CELL chip is nearing completion.

Sony said graphics workstations using the CELL could be available as soon as this winter.

Even if you figure late Winter (march-ish 2005) that's way sooner than I hoped.

Also Sun's Jonathan Schwartz shows off a Project Niagara chip: 8 cores * 4 threads per core = a 32-way computer. On a chip.

from the SlashDork dross I found this : Sony Cell CPU to deliver two teraflops in 64-core config from last November.

All this as a follow up on Dual Core Wars and The Other Shoe Droping.

Interesting times....

Saturday Night Hong Kong Films in Toronto (Omini TV )

Now Updated for 2005

Updated for Septebmer 2005: new listing at the new url :Saturday Night Hong Kong Films in Toronto (Omini TV ) Fall 2005

If you love Chinese Films and get Omini TV in the Toronto Area, do yourself a favour and watch or record their Saturday at 9pm movies (allmost always with english sub titles). I just discovered the schedule for the rest of this year here.

Unfortunately they only review past movies (huh?), but LoveHK Film covers most of them. I'll add links as time permits.

September 4	Love For All Seasons	Sammi Cheng, Louis Koo. Tiger has a thing for girls called Susan.  silly but fun
September 11	Sound Of Colours	Sweet romantic Comdey.      Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah
September 18	Fantasia	very very silly.
September 25	Magic Kitchen	a sweet, if light, film.  Sammi Cheng  was her yummy self, and Elicia thought Jerry Yen (Yin Sing-Yuk) was very cute too!  To be added to the secret Sammi cheng dvd library.
October 2	Protege La Rose Noire	More Twins + Ekin Cheng silliness?
October 9	Love For All Seasons Herbal Tea	Although they have not update their web site, the local tv guide shows that instead of re-showing L4AS (see sept 4th ) it's this unusual , but likable, romantic comedy starting Candy Lo Hau-Yam and Jordan Chan Siu-Chun
October 16	Sex and the Beauties	Comedy masquerading as the Hong Kong version of "Sex in the City"?
October 23	Elixir of Love	Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah (this is want the TV guide is showing
October 23Maybe October 30?(someone at Omini TV needs a calendar!)	Itchy Heart	Sean Lau Ching-Wan  Alert!!!
November 6	Life Express
November 13	Papa Loves You	1/2 Twin effect?
November 20	Love on the Rocks	Louis Koo Tin-Lok, Gigi Leung Wing-Kei, Charlene Choi Cheuk-Yin
November 27	The Foliage
December 4	Astonishing	No review on LoveHongKong Film (Astonishing!!)
December 11	Moving Targets	2004 film update of the popular Police Cadet serials from the 1980s
December 18	Dating Death	Horror, director Herman Yau Lai-To
December 25	Driving Miss Wealthy	Sean Lau Ching-Wan, Gigi Leung Wing-Kei • Driving Miss Wealthy goes by the Cantonese title Juet Sai Ho Bun

Hong Kong Film Festival, Toronto 2004

(Here you are Stella!) From the Arts NoteBook in todays Globe and Mail, I see that a Hong Kong Film Festival is showing at the ROM Theatre of the Royal Ontario Museum from OCT 2nd to 8th, 2004.

All films, subtitled in English, are being shown in the Calgary International Film Festival Sept 24 to Oct 2, before comming to Toronto.

Info for all this is carefully guarded on ROM's web site, in case someone actually found out, but I've braved the nav links and found the info buried treasure like on the ROM's calander of events for Oct

prices are very good: Tickets: Adult: $6.50 Senior/Student: $5.00 ROM Mbr: $5.00.

I've screen scrapped much of the stuff from the ROM site, reformed it and added reviews, but double check since "Information Subject to Change".

Box Office: ROM Information Desk www.rom.on.ca 416-586-8000
Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto www.cccgt.org 416-292-9293

Oct 2/04

Magic Kitchen (4:00 pm)
Director: Lee Chi-ngai;Cast: Sammi Cheng, Jerry Jan, Andy Lau

Chef/owner of a restaurant has successful career and empty love life. All changes when she meets an old flame during her appearance on the popular Japanese TV show “The Iron Chef”.

Review by LoveHKFilm.com. I am such a sucker for Sammi Cheng.

Floating Island (7:00 pm)
Director: Carol Lai; Cast: Karena Lam, Elkin Cheng, Liu Ye

Haunted by the death of her lover, heroine struggles to accept a new life in this touching romance.

I finally found a review of this movie with the english name "The Floating Landscape" as reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com.

Oct 3/04 Golden Chicken 2 (7:00 pm)
Director:Samson Chiu; Cast: Sandra Ng Kwan-yu, Leon Lai Ming,Kacky Cheung

82 yr old wise man meets teenager who is abusing the “Forget Love Pill” and schools him to find happiness and good memories.

It's worth noting that this is a sequal to the award winning Golden Chicken from 2002. Ask your Cantonese speaking friends to explain what "chicken" is slang for.

Oct 4/04 Running on Karma (7:00 pm)

Director: Johnny To, Wai Ka-fai; Cast: Andy Lau, Cecilia Cheung

Bodybuilder, stripper and former Buddhist monk with psychic powers helps rookie cop track down dangerous criminals.

Review by LoveHKFilm.com. Looks better than you would expect.

Oct 5/04 Lost in Time (7:00 pm)

Director: Derek Yee Tung-sing; Cast: Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, Sean Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo Tin-lok.

Heart wrenching drama about star crossed lovers.

Review by LoveHKFilm.com. I've see this one and it's very good (but now even more afraid of HK mini-buses, a.k.a. “suicide buses”!) Sean Lau Ching-wan is Elicia's Favourite (after me), and is very good.

Oct 6/04 Heroic Duo (7:00 pm)

Director: Benny Chan Muk-sing; Cast: Ekin Cheng Yee-kin, Leon Lai Ming,Francis Ng Chun-yu, Karena Lam

Member of elite G4 force enlists the assistance of psychologist to track down stolen gems in this cat and mouse thriller.

Reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com

Oct 7/04 Elixir of Love (7:00 pm)

Director: Riley Yip;Cast: Richie Ren Yan-qi, Miriam Yeung, Kenny Bee

11th Century storybook princess plagued by unfortunate curse is rescued from isolation by unexpected suitor who becomes her royal consort.

Reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com

Oct 8/04 20:30:40 (7:00 pm)

Director: Sylvia Chang; Cast: Sylvia Chang, Rene Liu, Angelina Lee

Tale of three women ages 20, 30, 40 are woven into a single story as they tackle the complexity of modern relationships.

Reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com

Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle

Had it's World premiere in Toronto last night at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2004

Looks very promising. Anti-it-Cool has 2 reviews: 1 & 2

Here the offical Movie website : http://www.kungfuhustle.com/

Since Kung Fu Hustle is not being release until Dec 23 (2004), Big White Guy is going to have to wait for this one.

Update : So the second showing (the next day on Sept 16th) did not happend. Boing Boing reports that Sony pulled it due to concerns about digital cameras etc, not because the "print was damaged in the first screening".


Another update : came across this story

Hong Kong king of comedy Stephen Chow's latest epic, Kung Fu Hustle, or Gong Fu in Chinese, hit the big screen at the Toronto Film Festival Tuesday night, China Radio International reported Wednesday.

But the veteran film star, who promised to show up at the grand world premiere, couldn't make it.

So the film's two leading actresses, Yuan Qiu and Eva Wong, did the honors instead.

Stephen Chow and Spiderman's sound effects man were reportedly busy with the final editing of Kung Fu Hustle's sound effects.

"Spiderman's sound effects man"? That's the guy who sings "SpiderMan, SipderMan, does whatever a spider can" right?

Stephen Chow is best known in North America for Shaolin Soccer, which showed up in movie preview 2 years before finally making it to screens here in Aug 2003 in a dubbed version.

Strange Attractors - An Animation Showcase

Strange Attractors - An Animation Showcase: 12 animations. 12 animators. 12 insights into their practice and their trade secrets. Experience 12 reasons why Victoria is the Australian centre for independent animation.

Will one of these 12 unique visions be the next to take the world by storm?

Utah's Software Game Show Whiz

and the answer would be "Who is Ken Jennings?"

Ken Jennings returns to Jeopardy tomorrow, Sept 6. As of now he's won USD$1.3 million (that's with a M!) in 38 games.

and Ken has a Wikipedia entry, witha great deal of detail.

How long can Ken go? How about: January 17, 2026

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2004

The Toronto International Film Festival begins Sept 9th (to 18th). The 2004 program looks very good. Also check out TIFF Reviews for the most up-to-the-minute news, reviews, ratings and discussions of films premiering at this year's Festival

The 2004 Hugo Award Winners

From Noreascon Four, The 62nd Worldcon

The 2004 Hugo Award Winners
Best Novel - Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
Best Novella - "The Cookie Monster" by Vernor Vinge
Best Novelette - "Legions in Time" by Michael Swanwick
Best Short Story - "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman
Best Related Book - The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Retrospective by John Grant, Elizabeth L. Humphrey, and Pamela D. Scoville
Best Professional Editor - Gardner Dozois
Best Professional Artist - Bob Eggleton
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form - Gollum’s Acceptance Speech at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards
Best Semi-Prozine - Locus, Charles N. Brown, Jennifer A. Hall, and Kirsten Gong-Wong, eds.
Best Fanzine - Emerald City, Cheryl Morgan, ed.
Best Fan Writer - Dave Langford
Best Fan Artist - Frank Wu
John W. Campbell Award for New Writers (not a Hugo Award) - Jay Lake
Special Noreascon Four Committee Award (not a Hugo Award) - Erwin "Filthy Pierre" Strauss

Ten CSS tricks you may not know : evolt.org, Code

Ten CSS tricks you may not know : evolt.org, Code

Hugo-Nominated Novella & Novelette

via Bureau 42

Vernor Vinge, "The Cookie Monster"
Kage Baker, "The Empress of Mars"
Walter John Williams, "The Green Leopard Plague"
Connie Willis, "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know"
Catherine Asaro, "Walk in Silence"

Best Novelette

James Patrick Kelly, "Bernardo's House"
Jeffrey Ford, "The Empire of Ice Cream"
Robert Reed, "Hexagons"
Jay Lake, "Into the Gardens of Sweet Night"
Michael Swanwick, ""Legions in Time
Charles Stross, "Nightfall"

Good mind expanding stuff all, in small packets...

Why Telcom firms wear coke-bottle glassess : Mobile 3G telecoms, finally

Via the Economist : Vision, meet reality, or why Telcom firms wear coke-bottle glassess.

advertising in network centric world

Via Futurismic

There's a very interesting conversation going on about the concept of sell side advertising on a number of blogs. Ross Mayfield kicked it off with a short essay on cost per influence. John Batelle took it from there and coined the term sell side advertising.

Ross took it back to add in a buy side component. Jeff Jarvis thinks this is a good start and wants to go farther by putting the consumer in control. Finally, Robin Good summarized the whole discussion as did Rajesh Jain's on Emergic

The Problem With the Music Industry

Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero", has written The Problem With Music. Here's the bottum line :

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties.

The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month.

The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys.

Other material On Intellectual Property Issues and Other stuff, inculding Mp3's

Update: But Don't worry about the Industry because the Recording Industry has a Grand Plan: Sue Some More against the evil file sharing , even if amidst the public ballyhoo about how rampant P2P piracy is costing the music business its very life (gasp! NO!), BMI announced it collected a record level of revenue and royalty payout to its artist members.

Caller ID Falsification Service

From Slashdot A US website will offer Caller ID falsification service...Slated for launch this week, Star38.com would offer subscribers a simple Web interface to a Caller ID spoofing system that lets them appear to be calling from any number they choose.

More onThe Register

All this without getting into VoIP hacks gut Caller I.D.. The system has long been open to manipulation.

Update : Here's the story on Zdnet: Caller ID: Do you really know who's calling?

Update 2: Startup hangs up quickly; Service that fools Caller ID causes anger via . Slashdot. Looks like the backlash has begun. The company is now getting Death Threats, looking to sell the business, etc..(profiting on the publicity or deciding that his privacy is more important?) all for commercially expoliting a (not widely) know loop hole in the system. But I can't see a reasonable cause to want to spoof the Caller Id short of police/spy stuff (and I think permision to do this would be a good think) and alot of un-reasonable reasons. I the very minimum I would want to see it highly regulated and licensed (and someone over looking the call logs)even if it was a goverment activity.

Let a Thousand Reactors Bloom, not boom!

Wired posted from their september 2004 print issue :Wired 12.09: Let a Thousand Reactors Bloom, about pebble-bed based nuclear reactors, that are safer that liquid based one, and scale differently too. More info here

And on a related note: Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends posted Nuclear Energy to Go, DOE designed self-contained, tamper-resistant nuclear reactor that can be transported and installed anywhere in the world, which would last 30 years and deliver between 10 and 100 megawatts. (also here on Space Daily

Or the furture could be based on Cold Fusion, which might make it back into the mainstream. Clearly something was happening.

Why is any of this important? We need Energy to run any kind of technologicaly culture (unless you want to kill off 2/3rd'd of the human population and go back to the 1700's in lifestyle, life expectancy and goverance?) The enviromental costs of fossil fuel is becoming clear (it more a matter of when we paid the costs and how high they are, not if). Conventional Nuclear energy has problems with safe operation and disposing of high radioactive waste (both are issues of perception more than fact) and convention Fusion has made gains but is still 20 to forty years off (and has been for 40 years; It's like the joke about Brazil : the country of the furture and allways will be ; sorry Brazil). We have done a much as we can we Hydro without huge enviromental side effects. Solar and Wind are important but are unlikey to delivery more the 20% of your energy needs. Conservation is important, and need to be supported, but again is at best at marginal gain.

Oh and Hydrogen an't going to help. You still need energy to generate all the Hydrogen. Hydrogen will reduce the side effects of running all those planes, trains, boats (ships) and cars.

In the short run it's either a) current nuclear and live with the worries or b) reduce your Consumption by 70%. (One of the biggest anti-nuc people people I ever knew, also had the bigest electronics gear collection!), c) burn coal and hope the ice caps don't melt in my lifetime.

In the medium term we need to figure out safe(r) fision like pebble-bed based nuclear, and long(er) term : fusion (hot or cold).


Update: a nicely done writen up from Gene Expression, with addtional links/info

Mark Cuban's 3 minutes are up...

Three Minutes With Mark Cuban:

The outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks talks about the future of high-definition TV.

Is he still Watching a Movie via a USB Flash drive KeyChain?

Sarbanes-Oxley : IT Risks and Controls Frequently Asked Questions

2 SOX related FAQ's from Protivti :
Sarbanes-Oxley : IT Risks and Controls and a Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Section 404 : Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Internal Control Reporting Requirements.

Also in the September issue of Baseline (in print and online) for a calculator that will give you the bad news--or the good.

All this as a follow-up to Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act Compliance or How I learned to Love the SEC and Fear Jail..